In 1890 there was nothing left of the sentimental
socialism which he had studied in 1848; it had been
blown away by the cold wind of scientific socialism
which Marx and Engels created. And Renan had
come to think that in this new form socialism would
triumph. [Footnote: He reckoned without the new
forces, opposed to socialism as well as to parliamentary
democracy, represented by Bakunin and men like Georges
Sorel.] He had criticised Comte for believing that
“man lives exclusively by science, or rather
little verbal tags, like geometrical theorems, dry
formulae.” Was he satisfied by the concrete
doctrine of Marx that all the phenomena of civilisation
at a given period are determined by the methods of
production and distribution which then prevail?
But the future of socialism is a minor issue, and
the ultimate goal of humanity is quite uncertain.
“Ce qu’il y a de consolant, c’est
qu’on arrive necessairement quelque part.”
We may console ourselves with the certainty that we
must get somewhere.

6.

Proudhon described the idea of Progress as the railway
of liberty. It certainly supplied motive power
to social ideals which were repugnant and alarming
to the authorities of the Catholic Church. At
the Vatican it was clearly seen that the idea was a
powerful engine driven by an enemy; and in the famous
syllabus of errors which Pope Pius ix. flung
in the face of the modern world at the end of 1864,
Progress had the honour of being censured. The
eightieth error, which closes the list, runs thus:

“The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, be reconciled
and come to terms with progress, with liberalism,
and with modern civilisation.”

No wonder, seeing that Progress was invoked to justify
every movement that offended the nostrils of the Vatican—­liberalism,
toleration, democracy, and socialism. And the
Roman Church well understood the intimate connection
of the idea with the advance of rationalism.